Tesa Arcilla

French law enforcement has frozen the accounts of Russian companies operated by the French subsidiary of VTB, Russia’s second-largest bank, officials told RBC TV channel. Diplomatic accounts were briefly frozen as well, but have since been unlocked.

Tens of thousands of Spaniards have taken to the streets of central Madrid in support of Podemos, a leftist political party campaigning on an anti-austerity platform. The party’s popularity has soared in the wake of the Syriza victory in Greece.

The British government endorsed the Syrian opposition’s armed fight against the country’s government, but is only willing to go that far in helping the millions of refugees the three-year-long conflict has produced.

With one in five mortgage payments being overdue in Ireland and families across the country having their homes repossessed, some of the debtors are hoping for bankruptcy to do away with their endless fear of losing their properties.

Ireland has pulled out of the IMF/EU bailout program, making it the first nation to work its way free of rescue loans. However, the country has yet to break free from the strict austerity measures which have characterized the bailout period.

A political party styling itself as the “new radical force on the left” has launched in the UK. The Left Unity seeks to revive the working class ideal of the Labour party which, it claims, is failing Britain’s poorest communities in the “class war”.

Reports that the US will veto the disclosure of conversations between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush have been denied by the UK Cabinet Office, which stated that the US does not have a veto.